The present invention relates to the field of co-browsing and, more particularly, to improving multi-domain co-browsing utilizing localized state management.
Web-based conferencing tools are frequently employed to enhance collaboration between users. One tool which is often utilized is co-browsing, which can permit two or more users to navigate the same networked resource (e.g., Web page) simultaneously within a session. For example, a user can navigate through multiple Web pages on a Web site on one computer while another user views the navigation using another computer. Often times Web sites can span multiple domains such as two sub-domains, which can restrict the use of many co-browsing applications.
Asynchronous Javascript and Extensible Markup Language (AJAX) communication is a commonly used mechanism amongst co-browsing applications. This mechanism is limited, however, by policies of traditional security models. For example, the same origin security policy restricts information exchange between co-browsing applications of different domains. Consequently, often times session information can be lost when co-browsing sessions span multiple domains and/or multiple co-browsing applications.
One current solution utilizes a proxy server as a routing mechanism to each of the domains involved in the co-browsing session. The drawback to this solution is that the proxy server needs to be configured to appropriately route requests to the appropriate domain server hosting the co-browsing application. This configuration can be time consuming and error-prone. Further, frequently the Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) patterns for co-browsing applications have similar patterns which results in URI rewrite rules that can be complex and difficult to maintain. In addition, the ability to share the session information between the co-browsing sessions is not available without exposing the session to security risks. For instance, explicitly configuring session cookies to be more global in nature can allow unauthorized entities access to content of the co-browsing session.